Rain tapped gently against the windowpanes of the Gotham Children's Home.
Inside, the lights were low. Bedtime had passed, but Kai sat upright in his cot, silent, blindfold on, eyes wide open beneath the cloth.
He wasn't looking at the room.
He was looking through it.
The cursed energy in Gotham hadn't vanished after the battle in the tunnels. It had changed. Thinned. Pulled back. Like predators sensing another beast had entered the forest.
But now, in the quiet that followed, Kai noticed something else.
The threads hadn't just faded.
They had started moving.
Over the next five nights, he tracked it.
Each evening, after lights out, he climbed to the rooftop in silence — no heavier than wind, no louder than dust — and sat beneath the stars with his senses open.
And every night, the same realization settled deeper in his bones:
The cursed energy wasn't retreating.
It was converging.
It came from abandoned factories, empty alleyways, the outskirts of town. Some threads, though faint, seemed to stretch from beyond the city. From places Kai had never seen with his eyes, but recognized in feeling: the desert quiet of the Middle East, the bitter tension of South American ruins, the weeping weight of Southeast Asian shrines.
They weren't just cursed spots.
They were feeding into Gotham.
Or rather… into him.
By the sixth night, he couldn't sleep.
He stayed at his desk while the other children drifted into dreams. Scrolls were spread across the floor — parchment lined with curse-reactive ink, hand-drawn maps, data compiled from everything he'd seen or sensed since the day he was reborn.
He had tried to believe it was coincidence. Gotham was a dark place. Of course curses would be drawn here.
But the Six Eyes didn't lie.
They didn't guess.
They understood.
And what he saw in those shifting threads wasn't chaos.
It was pattern.
He stood, moved to the window, and leaned slightly forward against the cold glass.
He whispered to no one, "It's me."
That was the only explanation.
He wasn't just a boy reborn with cursed energy.
He was the only jujutsu sorcerer in the world.
A singularity.
And the laws that governed curses had begun reacting to him the moment he opened his eyes.
Maybe not even the Archivist knew this would happen.
Maybe even Gojo hadn't been this alone in his world.
At breakfast the next morning, he was quiet.
More than usual.
The other kids laughed, played with their cereal, traded comic book cards and superhero stickers.
Kai sat at the end of the table, blindfold on, spoon unmoving in his bowl.
They talked about Batman.
How cool he was. How he could probably stop anything if he wanted to.
Kai lowered his head slightly, lips tightening.
Not this, he thought. He can't stop this.
Not because Batman wasn't capable.
But because he couldn't see it.
None of them could.
That afternoon, while walking with a staff member through the library block, Kai asked to step outside and get some air.
The woman smiled. "Just don't wander too far."
He nodded, hood up.
She never saw him slip away.
He moved between buildings like smoke, blindfold filtering cursed trails as he adjusted his pace. His gloves — embedded with faint curse-thread seams — prevented any detection from nearby cameras or sensors.
Every movement had a purpose.
Every step took him deeper into the city's forgotten veins.
He found the place by instinct.
Utility Access Sector 17-B.
A ruined subway maintenance route, closed off for decades after an earthquake collapsed half the corridor. No city crews. No wiring. No cameras. No magic.
Just silence.
And spiritual stillness.
Kai stepped into the main hallway and breathed.
The cursed energy wasn't repelled.
But it didn't move.
It simply hung there — neutral.
"I can work with this," he said aloud.
It wasn't much.
But it would be home.
That night, he returned with supplies.
Sealing chalk. Curse-infused parchment. Tags. Nails. Ink. Rope. Tools scavenged from orphanage maintenance closets and leftover gear from the tunnels.
No one noticed anything was missing.
He worked for hours.
Drawing slow, deliberate barrier scripts along the edges of the walls, layering energy suppression glyphs, crafting a perimeter ward to dull spiritual resonance.
Each stroke of the brush steadied his hands.
Each glowing sigil made the space more his.
By the time dawn approached, sweat clung to his collar and his knees were sore from kneeling.
But when he stood and looked around, he saw it:
Hollow Keep, Version 0.1
Not a fortress.
Not yet.
But a start.
Back at the orphanage, he returned just as the sun rose.
He entered through a loose ventilation shaft, slid through the common room, and reached his bed before anyone stirred.
He lay down, head turned toward the window, and watched the sky brighten behind his blindfold.
They still thought he was just quiet.
Still healing.
Still fragile.
But inside?
He was already building the weapons they didn't know they needed.
The next few days were filled with silent rituals.
He pretended to read during breaks.
But in reality, he studied feedback loops from the cursed threads tied to Hollow Keep's walls. His scripts were holding. The resonance hadn't leaked. The space was secure.
Safe for cursed tool crafting.
Safe for meditation.
Safe for becoming stronger.
On the seventh night, he returned to the roof.
And stared.
Not at the city.
But at the flow of cursed energy above it.
A network of negative thought, pulsing like an open nervous system.
He watched it rise from rooftops, crawl across powerlines, swirl in storm drains, settle beneath broken windows.
It didn't care about laws or locks or prayer.
But now… it hesitated.
He could feel it.
Some spirits were testing his range. Others circled Hollow Keep from a distance.
One had tried to creep into the orphanage grounds.
It stopped at the first boundary glyph.
And left.
Kai pulled out a fresh scroll, balanced it on his knee, and began writing:
They don't know what I am.
He paused.
Then wrote:
But I do. And that's enough.
He closed the scroll, slid it into his inner pocket, and let the silence stretch.
For now.